Competing ditransitive constructions in Enets

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-279
Author(s):  
Olesya Khanina ◽  
Andrey Shluinsky
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Discourse Function ◽  
Ditransitive Constructions ◽  
Mutual Distribution

Abstract This paper reports on a corpus study of two ditransitive constructions in Enets (Uralic, Samoyedic): the standard ditransitive construction and the so-called Destinative construction involving a specific destinative nominal morpheme. We suggest that the mutual distribution of the two competing constructions depends on referential properties of theme and information structure of the clause. The Destinative construction is used when a theme is indefinite, the standard ditransitive construction is used when a theme is definite. Most often, definiteness of a theme is also accompanied by specificity of a recipient; the combination of an indefinite theme and a non-specific recipient has not been attested at all. There is also a small number of cases when the standard ditransitive construction is used in clauses with an indefinite theme: in all such cases recipients are non-standard from the information structure point of view, they are either topical, emphatic, or extraposed. We suggest that both contexts of usage of the standard ditransitive construction can be explained if we describe its main discourse function as highlighting the known referents in discourse, be it definite themes or topical, emphatic, or extraposed recipients. The main discourse function of the destinative construction is then introducing new referents in the theme position.

scholarly journals Word order in Latin locative constructions: a corpus study in Caesar’s De bello gallico

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Skopeteas
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Structural Domains ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
First Order ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

AbstractClassical Latin is a free word order language, i.e., the order of the constituents is determined by information structure rather than by syntactic rules. This article presents a corpus study on the word order of locative constructions and shows that the choice between a Theme-first and a Locative-first order is influenced by the discourse status of the referents. Furthermore, the corpus findings reveal a striking impact of the syntactic construction: complements of motion verbs do not have the same ordering preferences with complements of static verbs and adjuncts. This finding supports the view that the influence of discourse status on word order is indirect, i.e., it is mediated by information structural domains.

scholarly journals Deutsches auch und italienisches anche im Vergleich

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (6) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Manuela Caterina Moroni ◽  
Ermenegildo Bidese
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Basic Functions ◽  
Semantic Point

The focus of our contribution is the German particle auch ‘also’ and its Italian counterpart anche. From a semantic point of view, auch and anche convey the same additive meaning in both languages: through them an element, called ‘domain of association’, is added to a list of further elements for which the auch/anche phrase applies. From a syntactical point of view, auch and anche can occupy different positions in the sentence by modifying the type and the scope of the domain of association. This results in four basic usage patterns which are similar in both languages and correspond to just as many functions of auch/anche: (i) additivity, (ii) sentence connection, (iii) focus domain, and (iv) modality. Despite these common functions, auch and anche interact with the syntax and the information structure of the sentence in German and in Italian differently. Furthermore, they are used in conversation contexts, which are distinctive in both languages. By starting from the current description of auch and anche in the literature, the first aim of our contribution is to provide evidence for the above-mentioned four basic functions despite their language-specific usage contexts. As a second aim, we want to validate our systematization through the analysis of spoken data for German and Italian, explaining why some functions are more likely to be found in the former than in the latter.

scholarly journals Right-dislocation in Catalan: Its discourse function and counterparts in English

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laia Mayol
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Content ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
English Text ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Discourse Function ◽  
Structure Information ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
Canonical Order ◽  
The Right ◽  
Previous Sentence

This paper presents a corpus study of right dislocation (RD) in Catalan and discusses crosslinguistic differences of information packaging between English and Catalan. The Catalan corpus consists of 93 RDs which have been coded according to three parameters: (1) the point where the entity in the right-dislocated constituent had appeared in the discourse, (2) consequences of eliminating the right-dislocated constituent and (3) consequences of restoring the canonical order. I argue that RD in Catalan is a means to structure information in a coherent way by displacing old information from the main clause. Three main types of RDs can be found: (1) RDs which activate an entity which was no longer accessible in the discourse and make it highly salient, while still marking its discourse-old status; (2) RDs which make explicit an implicit, never textually mentioned, referent and places it in a discourse-old information position. (3) RDs referring to entities mentioned in the previous sentence. Such RDs convey an additional meaning, some ‘emotional content’, having to do with the expression of opposition or emphasis. In order to analyse crosslinguistic differences, an English text and its Catalan translation have been used. The Catalan translation contained 42 instances of RD, while the English text contained none, which shows that the two languages use different strategies to encode information packaging. The Catalan translation uses RDs mostly in cases in which the English original repeats the same phrase in two consecutive utterances and in utterances which convey contrast or opposition.

Translation affects literary and cultural systems: how to observe the features of translation?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parl S. Plyth
Keyword(s):  
Computer Technology ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Business Politics ◽  
Communication Goals ◽  
To Come

In the field of translation studies, it has been researched how good translation should be done, how translation affects other literary and cultural systems, how translation is carried out to produce the desired response, who influences translation, how translation can be said to be a tool for mastering marginalized groups, and Finally, how to observe the translation features of the translated text database. The flow of this development leads to a conclusion that research in the early days started from the essence of translation and shifted and branched to things that were not closely related to the essence of translation, e.g. postcolonial studies in the field of translation. However, some try to come back with a new tool (corpus study). From the point of view of the language industry, there is an irresistible trend. The first trend is that the industry now views translation as a means to achieve communication goals (business, politics, culture, etc.). The second trend is better computer technology and the increasingly widespread use of cloud computing. As a result, this development, supported by economic globalization, has forced many changes in professions related to the language industry.

scholarly journals On the givenness of OV word order: a (re)examination of OV/VO variation in Old English

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
TARA STRUIK ◽  
ANS VAN KEMENADE
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Mixed Model ◽  
Linear Mixed Model ◽  
Multinomial Regression ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Given ◽  
New Hypothesis ◽  
Multinomial Regression Analysis

OV/VO variation in the history of English has been a long-debated issue. Where earlier approaches were concerned with the grammatical status of the variation (see van Kemenade 1987; Pintzuk 1999 and many others), the debate has shifted more recently to explaining the variation from a pragmatic perspective (see Bech 2001; Taylor & Pintzuk 2012a), focusing on the given-before-new hypothesis (Gundel 1988) and its consequences for OV/VO. While the work by Taylor & Pintzuk (2012a) focuses specifically on the newness of VO orders, the present study is particularly concerned with the givenness of OV word order. It is hypothesized that OV orders are the result of leftward movement from VO orders, triggered by givenness. A corpus study on a database of subclauses with two verbs and a direct object, collected from the YCOE (Taylor et al.2003) corpus, and subsequent multinomial regression analysis within a generalized linear mixed model shows that OV word order is reserved for given objects, while VO objects are much more mixed in terms of information structure. We argue that these results are more in line with an analysis which derives all occurring word orders from a VO base than an analysis which proposes the opposite.

Compound word stress

ELT Journal ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Compound Word ◽  
Compound Words ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
The Way ◽  
Stress Placement

Abstract Stress in English compound words poses difficult problems for foreign learners. English does not seem to be at all consistent in the way it treats compounds, either from the point of view of writing or from the point of view of pronunciation and especially stress. If we look at how this uncertainty and inconsistency arises we can perhaps understand better the difficulties. And if we look beyond the principles of word stress to the principles of accent placement, and in so doing pay attention to the information structure of compounds, we can obtain valuable guidance about stress placement in these words.

scholarly journals Subject case alternation in negated existential, locative, and possessive clauses in Latvian

Kalbotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Andra Kalnača ◽  
Ilze Lokmane
Keyword(s):  
Full Article ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Semantic Type ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Adverbial Modifiers ◽  
Strict Rule ◽  
Negative Form

[full article and abstract in English] The goal of this article is to analyse the alternation between the genitive and nominative cases in Latvian. As the alternation between genitive and nominative cases is possible in all clauses in which the verb būt ‘to be’ is used as an independent verb, this article examines existential, locative, and also possessive clauses, while also demonstrating that distinguishing these clause types is problematic for Latvian utilising the criteria given in the linguistic literature. Clauses containing the negative form of būt ‘to be’, i.e. nebūt, form the foundation of those selected for this study, as only in these sentences the genitive/nominative alternation can be seen for the subject in Latvian. There are only fragmentary descriptions of existential clauses as a unique semantic type, primarily in connection with the function of the verb būt ‘to be’ and the problems associated with distinguishing its independent and auxiliary meanings. Word order in existential, locative, and possessive clauses has, until now, been examined in connection with typical clause expanders – adverbial modifiers and the dative of possession as well as the information structure of the clause. At the same time, case choice for objects in negative existential clauses has traditionally been one of the most studied themes regarding language standardisation. In order to determine which factors affect the choice of either the genitive or nominative case, a corpus study was done analysing 979 examples: 882 with a genitive subject and 97 with a nominative subject. It was found that a connection exists between the definiteness of the subject, word order, and case choice; however, this manifests only as a tendency rather than as a strict rule.

scholarly journals I dette åbenbaringens lys — an example of word formation, incongruency, or maybe something completely different?

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
Andrzej Szubert ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Regular Structure ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
Semantic Point ◽  
The One

The article concerns constructions such as et herrens år in Danish where the first of the nouns is in the definite form (with a suffixed definite article), in the genitive case and functions as an attribute and not a determiner in relation to the following noun. The determiner (a definite or indefinite article, demonstrative pronoun, etc.), on the other hand, is not linked directly to the following noun but to the one that occurs in the last position of the whole phrase. This stands in contrast to the regular structure of the noun phrase where the determiner refers to the directly following noun (e.g., en bils ejer). In the case of the construction discussed here, however, the determiner refers to the last noun in the phrase (e.g., dette herrens år). Moreover, adjectives can occur before both nouns, but they will always refer to the last noun (e.g., en vældig kræfternes udfoldelse). The work discusses both the grammatical and semantical aspects of the construction. As demonstrated in the article, the construction should not be treated from the perspective of word formation, as it is rather an example of an attributive use of a definite noun in the genitive. Secondly, it is also interesting to point out that the semantic relations within the construction do not fully overlap with the grammatical relations, as from the semantic point of view the determiner, the adjectives, as well as the attributive noun, refer to the main noun. Thirdly, and most importantly, there are strong indications that here we are not dealing with just a few rare examples of a more literary style or certain fixed expressions, but with a regular grammatical construction. To conclude with certainty, however, it is necessary to complement this exploratory research with a corpus study, and preferably also a survey that could reveal the native speakers’ perception of the construction.

scholarly journals On word order variation and informationstructure in peninsular spanish and italian ‘why’-interrogatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. e021025
Author(s):  
Svenja Schmid ◽  
Klaus Von Heusinger ◽  
Georg A. Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
High Preference ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
Structural Category ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we investigate the effect of information structure on word order in Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives, and whether these two languages differ from each other. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies. In a parallel text corpus study, we compared the frequency of the word order patterns ‘why’SV and ‘why’VS, as well as the distribution of focal and non-focal subjects in the two languages. In order to get a deeper understanding of the impact of the information structural categories focus and givenness on word order in ‘why’-interrogatives, we conducted a forced-choice experiment. The results indicate that word order is affected by focus in Italian, while it is not determined by any information structural category in Peninsular Spanish. We show that Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives differ from each other in two ways. First, non-focal subjects occur preverbally in Italian, while they occupy the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish. Second, Italian reveals a lower level of optionality with respect to word order patterns. Even though we find a high preference for the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish, we argue that this limitation is related to a higher flexibility regarding word order in Peninsular Spanish than in Italian which does not allows for ‘why’VSO in contrast to Peninsular Spanish.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document